


Like a Chapel in a Hospital

by Sour_Idealist



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, F/M, Ficlet
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-09-18
Updated: 2011-09-18
Packaged: 2017-10-23 20:13:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 428
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/254467
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sour_Idealist/pseuds/Sour_Idealist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They do the best they can to keep each other alive.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Like a Chapel in a Hospital

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the anonymous prompt "I love you in the same way there’s a chapel in a hospital/one foot in your bedroom and one foot out the door/sometimes we take chances, sometimes we take pills/I could write it better than you ever felt it." That, like the title, would be from the song "Hum Hallelujah."

“If you take _another fucking sip_ ,” he tries to snarl, hand twisted around her wrist, liquid in the glass trembling and lamplight shining green through the bottle and ghostlike onto the skin, “I swear to fucking God I am chucking every thing of booze in this house off the roof, I swear to God.”

“In that case, I hope you have a truly spectacular alternative,” she snaps, two inches shorter than he is and still a fucking icicle of a woman, “because, as much as it pains me to admit it, I truly need a distraction tonight.”

He kisses her like there’s stone under her feet and a ball of yarn in her hand, like he hasn’t signed every email for the past five years with the smarmiest love-from-your-brother messages he had in him, like he’s trying to perform fucking vertical mouth-to-mouth, and frankly he kisses her like he hasn’t learned a God-damned thing about kissing since he was thirteen years old and nearly lost his tongue trying to say goodbye to a tiny sharp-clawed slave to justice, but he still hears a crystal shot glass shattering just behind his foot, feels whiskey splashing cold down the back of his suit, his hair twisting in Rose’s hands.

“Workable,” she says, the tone of voice that’s suited a lot better to haughty-polished code for _fucker,_ cloudy-sunrise drunken flush building under her skin and he’s close enough to her to count eyelashes and pores, and also he’s dating another girl who looks half like Jade and half not even close, and Rose told him three years ago that she doesn’t even _like_ men and he’s got all the reason in the world to believe her, but when she hooks her fingers into the knot of the stupid fucking tie he can’t stop wearing, he doesn’t shift his balance so that he can pull away.

Fifteen minutes later she’s got her ankles locked around his hips, skin to same-shade skin and this is the closest to narcissism he’ll ever come, fingers folded together hard enough to fracture - it takes him a week to check and he spins a stupid story nobody believes about how he broke it, but no one guesses the real reason even if that’s maybe more because nobody remembers how much muscle there is bound up in Rose’s hands - and once they’ve seen each other all grunting and animal-looking it feels like it’s all right to cry.

Happy motherfucking April Fifteenth, and they should have done this two nights ago and sooner or later they’ll find another excuse.


End file.
